They wouldn't want us to stop
by Macy12
Summary: TW- attempted suicide Spoilers for future TASM movies - What we do, it puts the people closest to us in danger. And we can do all we can to protect them but that won't always work out. But they wouldn't want us to stop saving people. And I know for a fact she wouldn't want you to carry on like this.


It was his fault.

His fault she was gone.

NO! No. no no no.

He wasn't the one that threw her off the edge.

… but it was his attempt to catch her that snapped her neck.

So it _was_ his fault.

If he had just stayed away. If he had just kept his promise and stayed away, none of this would have happened.

"But I guess that's what I do," Peter scoffed inside his head. "Fail. Hurt the people I love. Never do anything right."

His fist clenched around the Spiderman mask until his hand hurt before throwing it across the room as hard as he could. Moonbeams and the glare of the lights outside courtesy never sleeping New York shining through his window was the only light source in his dark bedroom. Peter had climbed in through his bedroom window who knows how long ago, time was blurring together, because he knew he couldn't face his dads. He couldn't look them in the eye knowing that he killed Gwen.

He killed Gwen.

He balled in on himself in his position on the floor, still gloved fingers tightening around balls of hair, an action that would normally cause him pain but his whole body was already numb. He was still in the suit but he didn't care, he was too weak to change. It was like the world had stopped. He was alone... hell, who would want to be around him anyways? _Who would want someone like him in the world? _He doesn't even want himself in the world. White noise flooded his ears as Peter Stark-Rogers slowly turned his head to the black contraption lying on the floor next to him. The thing he had lifted off that mugger _so_ easily on the way home. The thing that could end this. The thing that could stop him from hurting anyone else ever again.

"And he didn't have to think when he reached out and grabbed it. His brain was dead silent as he ran his finger over the barrel of the gun.

Just do it, nobody loves you anyways."

His inner demons hissed inside his mind.

"How will your dads feel when they find out what you did to her? They'll hate you. They'll wish they never adopted such a terrible son. They'll be ashamed of you."

"She's gone because of you.

You hurt people.

You killed Gwen.

_You killed Gwen."_

And that was all it took. He held the gun the side of his head and ran his finger over the trigger.

"I'm sorry, Gwen." he whispered, letting his chin hit his chest and squeezing his eyes shut before...

_**BAM**_

_****_Peter's bedroom door flung open slamming into the wall next to it. Light from the hallway illuminated his cave of a room. He didn't need to look up to know who it was.

"Pete..." Tony said slowly and shakily, inching his way inside as if he were afraid he might hit a trip wire and set off a bomb.

Peter's hand dropped the gun to the ground with a clatter. He couldn't do it. Not in front of them. That's when he let himself crumble. He kept his head down as the sobs that had been beating against his eyes all night finally broke loose.

Once the gun hit the ground Tony sped across the room in lighting time, with Steve close on his heels. He was at Peter's side in half a second, wrapping his arms around his son and pulling him close to his chest. Steve kicked the gun so that it slid to a corner in the opposite side of the room before sitting on the opposite side of Peter and enveloping him and Tony as a million thoughts raced through his head.

They had been in the living room, waiting for Peter to get home when JARVIS had alerted them. And as his heart leapt into his throat, Steve saw Tony drop what he was working on and let it fall to the ground before he took off towards Peter's room. Steve jumped up right behind him and he swore he had never run so fast in his life.

So there they sat, holding the boy they'd adopted so many years ago as his body shook with every sob that echoed through his room.

"I-I-killed her, dad. It's a-all my fa-ault." He choaked out.

"Shhh, shhh," Tony whispered into Peter's hair, tightening his grip on his son's shoulders. "Just breathe."

"I pr-promised, and now she's gone. I failed him, and I-I failed you guys."

"No, you didn't." Steve pressed a kiss on to the top of the shaking teenager's head.

Truth be told he didn't know what Peter did or didn't do. Who did he supposedly kill? It was a girl, somebody he made a promise about. Suddenly it hit him. Nudging Tony with his foot he mouthed over Peter's head, "Gwen."

Tony's eye widened and then fell into that look he gets when he sees those commercials with the sad, hurt animals, but this time it was slightly different. This time it was darker, probably flashing back to the time when he thought he had lost Pepper and Happy, how he had felt like he should have protected them, that the Iron Man thing had put them in danger in the first place.

From then on they sat silently. They didn't know how long it was, it felt like forever, but they just sat there, desperately clinging to Peter, shielding him from the world with their embrace, until he finally stopped shaking and his breathing steadied. Steve glanced at his son's face to see that he had cried himself to sleep. Even after that neither of the men let go. The held their son's sleeping form into the night. Until finally they slid him out of the Spiderman outfit and into a tee-shirt and sweats and tucked him into bed-by some miracle- without waking him once.

After they had slipped into the hallway, the events of the night hit Tony like a truck going 100mph. He had somehow managed to deny the horrifying truth of what had happened but now it finally hit him that is was real, and nothing could change that now. He swallowed the huge lump in his throat as his ears started ringing and his head went fuzzy. He never felt this way before, it was worse than the panic attacks, worse than anything, and he never wanted to feel it again.

"What do we do now?" He whispered to Steve as he clenched his eyes shut and leaned back against Peter's door.

"We figure it out as we go." Steve didn't look much better than Tony felt. He leaned forward into his tall blonde husband's blue shirt and Steve wrapped his arms around Tony. "We just- be there. For him." Steve whispered before kissing the top of Tony's head.

The inventor leaned back, sniffling and wiping his eyes. "I um- I want to stay with him tonight."

"Ok, I'll stay too."

Tony nodded shortly before turning and opening the door slowly and creeping inside Peter's room. He took slow careful steps as not to wake him, but he didn't even stir. Poor kid had exhausted himself.

That's when it caught Tony's eye. The evil black gun that had been pressed to the head of his son, _his _Peter, and that thought made him want to throw up.

Steve caught his line of vision and carefully crept into the corner and picked the gun up. "I'll handle it." He pressed a quick Kiss to Tony's forehead before creeping back out of the room.

Tony Stark didn't know what to do. He always knew what to do. He always knew something, but his mind was a never ending black hole right now. So he did all he could think to do. He slid down into a bean bag in Peter's room and watched his son's chest rise and fall until the heaviness in his eyelids became too much and he finally drifted into sleep.

Peter woke up to the sun shining through his eyelids and a soft humming coming from the corner. He opened his eyes groggily. He felt like shit. It had been 3 days since "the incident" as he called it in his brain, and he had yet to leave his bed. He slept most of the time, since if he was asleep he didn't have to think, but he was constantly plagued by nightmare after nightmare so it was a loose loose situation. He only really sat up to eat when he was being forced to eat, because honestly he hadn't been hungry once. Overall his dads had left him alone. He woke up the first night to see them asleep on the floor and in his chair, but in the morning they were gone. Since then it'd just been her.

"You used to sing that song to me when I had nightmares." Peter said in a hoarse voice, not moving from his spot on the bed with the sheets pulled up to his chin.

Natasha smiled. "I sang that to you last night when you had a nightmare."

Peter swallowed a lump in his throat. "You don't have to babysit me."

"Yeah I do," she raised an eyebrow at him. "Cause if I don't your dads will. So I'll let you pick who you want right now."

Peter's silence answered that question.

"How you feeling kiddo?"

Natasha and Peter had always been close. It wasn't a friend relationship, or a mother-son thing, or even a brother-sister scenario. No, it was unique to just them. At first Natasha had been deathly afraid of Peter as a baby, not going anywhere near him for fear she "might break it" a she had put it. But ever since Clint had coaxed her into holding Peter there was a bond. A bond that hadn't been broken since. She wasn't the nurturing type, you can't be in this business, you'll get yourself killed, but she felt a sense of protectiveness over Peter. It was almost the same way she felt towards Clint.

Peter closed his eyes and rolled over on his back. "Like I want to just sleep forever."

"Well you're doing well on that so far you haven't left your bed in what, 3 days?"

Natasha had come over the morning after "the incident". Tony and Steve had called her cause hell they didn't know what to do, but the one thing they did know was that Peter probably didn't want to be with them right now, no matter how much they wanted to be with him. So they called her, cause she was always the one Peter wanted. When he fell and scraped his knee, when he got the flu, when some kids where picking on him. It was always her. And he loved his dads like crazy, they knew that, but sometimes you don't need a parent, you need a friend.

She hadn't really left his room for 3 days either. She sat in his desk chair during the day, mostly watching him sleep and having 30 second conversations before he either went back to sleep or pretended to be sleeping. Singing when he had a nightmare like she used to do when he was little. She only really left to get food from downstairs that she knew he wouldn't eat, but it made Tony and Steve less worried if they thought he was at least eating.

Peter didn't answer.

"You need to talk to them," she instructed, grabbing a book off his desk and flipping through it aimlessly. "I know you don't want to, but I promise you they get it more thank you think they do."

"Get what?!" Peter sat up suddenly. "Get that I promised to protect her, get that I wasn't strong enough to stay away so she was in danger, and then after all that when I tried to save the day it was _me_ who-"

He couldn't bring himself to say "killed Gwen" but she knew what he meant.

Peter's heart felt like it was going to beat out of his chest. He inhaled deeply and starred at his hands.

"Get that I tried to shoot myself in the head," he said barely audibly before a tear trickled down his cheek.

Natasha placed the book on the desk before standing and crossing the room, and sitting on the bed next to Peter.

"We've all been there, Peter." Natasha said placing her hand on his leg. God she wasn't good at this… "All of us. Clint still eats himself up inside over what he did under Loki's control. Bruce blames himself for all the destruction the Hulk brought. Steve still has flash backs and crashing that plane, and Tony has had some serious PTSD over all he's been through," she took in a deep breath. "And you know what I did before I came to SHIELD?"

Peter nodded slowly.

"It still haunts me. To this day I'm trying to even out my karma, but with every person I manage to save there's 5 that I've killed. My conscience is stained black, and every night I see them. See each and every face, each life that I ripped from the world. And it's hard, and sometimes I think that there's no way I deserve to still be breathing if I did all of _that. _But then I go on a mission, and I help people. And maybe I will never be able to fix what I did in the past but that doesn't have to stop me from doing better in the future.

What we do, it puts the people closest to us in danger. And we can do all we can to protect them but that won't always work out. But they wouldn't want us to stop saving people. And I know for a fact she wouldn't want you to carry on like this."

And that's when he shattered. Breaking down into sobs he leaned forward into her and she wrapped her arms around him, and in that moment she swore he was 5 years old again. What she wouldn't give for it to be that simple, just one more time.

"You should talk to them." She repeated, not letting go of Peter.

She felt him nod under her chin. Peter leaned back. His eyes were red, and he sniffed deeply before wiping the wetness from his cheeks.

"I don't know if I can do this."

"You can," Natasha said squeezing his hand. "Cause you're a hero, Pete. You may not believe it right now but you've always been a hero. Always been _my_ hero."


End file.
